


you always were the gentle one, teething on a shotgun

by timeladyleo



Series: flowers for tardises [2]
Category: Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Character Study, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-21 06:40:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30017682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeladyleo/pseuds/timeladyleo
Summary: Leela has long believed the Time Lords to be too stagnant, atrophying on crumbling towers as they look out over the rest of the universe, believing themselves its rulers. Telling, she thinks, that they named themselves Lords.Set somewhere between Fractures and Warfare.
Relationships: Leela/Romana II
Series: flowers for tardises [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2169714
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	you always were the gentle one, teething on a shotgun

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by _my limb_.

The darkness is giving her too much time to think. It’s like permanently lying awake in the dead of night, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep, tormented by flashes from the past. Regret. Fear. It’s worse in the night, but before the blindness, at least she could push it away, focus on what she could see before her. Focus on the shapes in the ceiling or trees above to distract her until she drifted away.

In this permanent darkness, it’s getting harder and harder to remember what she’s fighting for.

Part of her wants to still be angry at Romana, to keep raging into battle, setting bombs and laying traps for Pandora. Resistance fighting feels like what she’s made for, and for the first time in years on Gallifrey, she feels alive again. She’s long believed the Time Lords to be too stagnant, atrophying on crumbling towers as they look out over the rest of the universe, believing themselves its rulers. Telling, she thinks, that they named themselves Lords.

And it’s not that she’d been wishing for war. She’s seen what bloody battle can do to people, and she wouldn’t even wish that on her enemies in the Citadel. No, war is too cruel even for those who could do with knocking down a few pegs. But she’s often thought that many of them deserve a smack at least. Just a little something to get their blood running again. It’s not like she’d smack them too hard, nothing enough to cause lasting damage. Just enough to punish them for all the times they called her savage.

Romana would advise against it – she would say something like “It is giving them what they want if you exhibit such base behaviours.” But Darkel has such a conniving smirk and Leela has often fantasised giving her what she deserves. Not enough to cause lasting damage. Just a little bit of pain to make her sorry.

That’s what these traps, these bombs, this petty destruction has felt like lately. Making them sorry. And it has felt good to know she is helping, that her efforts are needed no matter what the others might think. Romana needs her more than ever. And that’s why she can’t walk away now.

Because it’s bigger than smashing stuff up for fun. It’s all too suddenly become a fight for the future of Gallifrey.

And to think, Leela had once thought Romana soft, another one of those sorts of leaders who speaks and speaks and speaks and does nothing, too afraid to get her hands dirty and so needed someone unafraid and full of fire like Leela. She knows she’s wrong now. Romana doesn’t need her at all. Romana is more than capable of fighting her own war.

And maybe that’s why she needs Leela more than ever.

Leela rolls over, the hard dirt beneath her offering no comfort. It never used to bother her, sleeping in the open, but her lavish rooms have made her soft, and without her eyes her every other sense is alight. She can feel each crack in the ground, each tiny stone trying to break its way to the surface. Once, the Doctor had told her a story that sounded like this, about a princess trying to sleep or else falling in love. It had been hard to follow, as most of his stories had been, wrapped up in the sense that she should be learning a lesson from his muddled and confusing words.

She’s under no illusion as to what she is here, though. She’s no princess. She never was, and even less so among the Lords of Time. She doesn’t belong here. But she can’t seem to leave. No matter how hard she tries, no matter how many different ways she says it’s over for real, that she’s going and not coming back, she can’t seem to leave.

It’s like Romana’s got some power over her, some magnetism that keeps drawing her back. Like the tide. She’s no princess, and neither is Romana any more. And even though Leela is hesitant to admit it to herself because she’s still supposed to be angry with Romana, it hurts to see her brought so low by Pandora. Hurts to see her cast off as easy as a sailboat under a gust of wind. It’s like they’ve forgotten how hard Romana tried to do the right thing for them, still tries. It’s like they don’t care at all.

So many times Leela has tried to tell herself that too. Not that she wants to be aligned with Pandora in any way, but she thought that it might be easier if she didn’t care. She thought it might have been easy not to care after the truth. Because the truth is never easy, and the truth is that Romana killed Andred and K-9, her husband and her best friend.

Even if Andred hadn’t been himself for a long time, it still should matter for something. Shouldn’t it?

Leela rolls onto her back and sighs, pretending she can see her breath in the night, a fog floating up and up to the stars. The truth is that it’s too warm for breath to be seen, that the air is damp so the chances are that clouds cover the sky. But she can’t see, so she can’t see the harm in pretending.

Well, pretending this, anyway. Everything else is far too complicated to categorise into truth and lie. Sometimes things that are right are still wrong.

That’s the sort of nonsense the Doctor used to spout, little sayings that Leela had dismissed as silly gibberish. She’s starting to understand them now. Sometimes people do the wrong thing for the right reasons. Sometimes, the bomb just goes off, and there’s nothing you can do except live with the consequences. In some ways, she’s glad she can’t see Romana’s face, because she knows all too well the expression she’d see, the guilt and the pity. Leela doesn’t need pity, and no-one needs Romana’s guilt. She has too much of it, and one day, Leela is afraid it will get them all killed.

She doesn’t need pity, and she doesn’t need Romana. She’s not here for Gallifrey, nor for the battle or the righteousness. Narvin still enrages her and those she fights with still see her as feral, little more than a rabid dog to be let loose on the enemy. She is more than that. She is stronger than that and she doesn’t need their approval to know it.

But in the dark, it’s hard, and it’s getting harder to pretend otherwise. In the dark, she’s finding it harder and harder to know what’s true, what to believe in. The only one she can trust any more is Romana. She’s the only one worth fighting for.

Only a couple of hands away, she can hear the slow double heartbeat of a Time Lord, the deep breathing of different lungs, deeper still in sleep. They don’t sleep very often, and Leela doesn’t dare disturb her. Romana so often looks like she needs her rest these days.

Even in the dark, Leela finds Romana’s hand without trouble. She knows Romana’s shape so well. She doesn’t need to see to know it. She doesn’t need words to know that Romana needs her as much as she needs Romana. As little as either of them want to admit it.

And in her sleep, without even knowing, Romana squeezes Leela’s hand back. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr at [sircarolyn](https://sircarolyn.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
